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The present invention relates generally to a supplier quality review process and more specifically to an Internet based reliability goods monitoring process.
Manufacturer supplier quality has long been an important aspect of manufacturer product quality. The importance of supplier quality and reliability has increased in recent years as the margin for unacceptable supplied goods has decreased. Historically, manufacturers, to whom suppliers provide parts, determine supplier quality after the goods have been received, long after the parts leave the supplier premises. Only after conducting incoming inspection or having the goods rejected in the normal production process does the manufacturer know of the level of quality of the supplier goods.
Reliability methodologies exist which enable a manufacturer to determine the level of supplier quality. Methods such as parts reliability status and mean time between failure (MTBF) estimates have been historically used in goods quality evaluation. Exponential reliability is one mathematical model by which changes in reliability may be determined. If the probability of failure during the useful life is approximately random then it is said to have an exponential distribution. Parts that exhibit random failures are thus particularly suited for the exponential reliability failure rate prediction equation. Other failure rate prediction functions including the Weibull, lognormal, normal, gamma, and other distributions. These functions may be used to estimate reliability and to determine changes in reliability.
It would be desirable to have a system that uses the efficiency of the Internet to contemporaneously provide parts reliability information to the receiver before the goods are shipped to the receiver. This gives the manufacturer and supplier the ability to resolve reliability problems quicker. It also gives the manufacturer the ability to reject or re-work the parts before they are used to assemble the finished product.
The present invention is a process for identifying the reliability and shift in reliability of evaluated parts, by capturing test data via the Internet at the supplier""s site and setting an Internet communicated alarm in the event that evaluated parts fall outside at least one predetermined acceptable range. In an exemplary embodiment the above identified process comprises the following steps: first, a supplier identification number and related information is communicated to the Supplier Process Quality (SPQ) program residing on a server to authorize the supplier to send data to the host user and set the respective alarm limits; next the respective supplier registers by logging on to the server by providing the associated ID and related information; next, the respective supplier provides measured data relating to the evaluated goods; finally, the SPQ program evaluates the data and alarms when the calculated results of the data fall outside the respective preselected range.